It is the third time that ECML privateers have failed. Operator Sea Containers was the first.

Its successor National Express abandoned the franchise in 2009 after proving incapable of running the service efficiently.

Government-owned Directly Owned Railways took over ECML. During five years under public control, efficiency and passenger satisfaction soared and ECML handed a £1bn surplus to the Treasury.

In 2014, the Tories and their Liberal Democrat collaborators responded to the publicly owned success by privatising ECML again, handing it to a partnership of Virgin and Stagecoach, with the latter holding a 90 per cent stake, and once again the privatised model has failed.

Rail, Maritime and Transport union general secretary Mick Cash said: “This shameful fiasco on one of Britain’s main rail routes needs to end and it needs to end now.

“East Coast should be renationalised with immediate effect and the scale of the scandal unveiled today should mark the point at which the whole rotten business of rail privatisation in Britain was called to a halt.”